"Let us return to Jerusalem," said Mary of Nazareth, "for I would fain know whether my son John be safe; then there is also the house to be looked to."
So they went back to Jerusalem for a space. Ben Hesed and his grandchildren also.
But Anna and her husband went not all the way. "Jerusalem is hateful to me," said Caiaphas, "and, moreover, we should be in peril of our lives at the hand of our kindred. We will go away into Galilee, for I would fain behold all the places where the Lord lived and taught, and where also he passed his childhood."
So the two parted from the others after that they had passed the wilderness, and they traveled humbly as pilgrims; sojourning long in all the places where Jesus had been in his life-time; and this did they for many years, till that Caiaphas was grown to be an old man.
"I am not worthy," he said humbly, "to write of all that he taught and suffered, that should be writ by the hand of one that loved him while he yet lived; but I can gather up the tales that are told of his sinless childhood."
And so as they journeyed he made inquiry everywhere concerning the child Jesus; insomuch that after a time the children would point him out and whisper, "Yonder old man is the prophet of the Child Jesus."
And after many years he made a book of these tales, and it was called "The Gospel of the Infancy." He took great pleasure and comfort in the work, and it occupied all the closing years of his life.
"One thing only do I regret," he said to his wife many times, "and that is that I did not begin this work while the mother of our Lord yet lived; for she could have told me whether it be truly set forth; but now I shall never know."
"Thou wilt know, beloved, afterward," said Anna, her eyes shining with a wise and tender light. "For it must needs be that angels watched with awe each moment of that earth-life; be sure that it is all writ in heaven."
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STEPHEN ***